Ninth Circuit’s eco-forays are unconstitutional says dissenting judge

Seal of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Guest post by Alec Rawls

Gabrial Malor at Ace of Spades HQ pulls some choice excerpts from what he calls an “epic broadside” by Judge Milan Smith. After reviewing a number of cases where the Ninth Circuit has upended whole fields of economic activity with rulings that contradict both statutory requirements and executive rulemaking (imposing stormwater runoff regulations on logging roads that had been explicitly exempted from such regulation by the EPA, twisting water use statutes to parch California’s central valley in favor of Delta Smelt), the last paragraph of Smith’s dissent drops the hammer:

No legislature or regulatory agency would enact sweeping rules that create such economic chaos, shutter entire industries, and cause thousands of people to lose their jobs. That is because the legislative and executive branches are directly accountable to the people through elections, and its members know they would be removed swiftly from office were they to enact such rules. In contrast, in order to preserve the vitally important principle of judicial independence, we are not politically accountable. However, because of our lack of public accountability, our job is constitutionally confined to interpreting laws, not creating them out of whole cloth. Unfortunately, I believe the record is clear that our court has strayed with lamentable frequency from its constitutionally limited role (as illustrated supra) when it comes to construing environmental law. When we do so, I fear that we undermine public support for the independence of the judiciary, and cause many to despair of the promise of the rule of law.

Our green-obsessed legislatures are plenty bad but at least their electoral accountability forces them to limit the damage. Green judges are apparently seeing this as a problem that they should correct. After all, isn’t the role of the courts to hold the legislative and executive branches to higher principles than their worldly natures incline to?

Yes, but only when the higher principles in question are those laid out in the Constitution. Green principles, found nowhere in the Constitution, are entirely for the “political branches” to embrace or renounce as they see fit, so long as the Constitution is not violated.

When judges impose their own political principles they are the ones who are violating the Constitution. Trusted to defend against tyranny, they instead become tyrants themselves.

Willie Soon, Edward Calabrese and the not-so-demon mercury

The case that occasions Judge Smith’s dissent involves minute amounts of mercury stirred up by small scale suction dredging for gold. Both elements are heavy so neither is going to be carried far by the current but some increase in water-borne mercury does result, which is claimed to present a risk to drinking water downstream.

The California department of Fish and Game wants to deregulate the industry (originally regulated to protect fish, which can be accomplished by seasonal restrictions). That brought in the eco-activists and the EPA, both demanding suffocation by green tape, and the Ninth Circuit finds a way to do their bidding, regardless of the law.

But on to the science. As Willie Soon discussed here Monday, mercury regulation is highly irrational, with regulators imposing huge costs to reduce human mercury emissions that are dwarfed by natural emissions. Lacking any evidence that natural levels of mercury exposure are harmful, there is no basis for thinking that our small additions are doing any harm.

Actually, we can go further and say that small increases in exposure to mercury are beneficial. This is due to the poorly understood but well documented phenomenon of “hormesis” whereby seemingly any substance that is harmful in higher doses will have a “hormetic range” where small enough doses will typically have a stimulative or prophylactic effect, presumably from the body gearing up to resist the assault.

The expert on this subject is Dr. Edward Calabrese from the University of Massachusetts who has revolutionized toxicology with his vast research on hormetic effects, but the regulators don’t want to hear it:

Regulators currently assume that toxins either always pose some risk at any level or that there’s a threshold below which toxins won’t cause health problems. But while these assumptions are used to regulate everything from mercury to pesticides, Calabrese argues that they just don’t reflect the paradoxical and sometimes beneficial effects seen at low doses in the lab. “The central pillar of toxicology is the dose response,” he says. “I’m telling them that they got the most fundamental aspect of their field wrong.”

Here is a link to one of Dr. Calabrese’s papers on the subject. If you are not familiar with the hormesis phenomenon it is well worth a look. The hormetic effects of mercury are particularly well studied thanks to the thimerosal scare. This study, for instance, found that low dose exposure to thimerosal from its use as a vaccine preservative actually lowers autism rates, much to the surprise of its authors. Calabrese’s response (linked below the abstract), clues them in to the mother lode they just suction-dredged a nugget from.

Demonization of mercury is one of the main weapons the EPA wields against CO2-producing fossil fuels. Mercury and Air Toxics Standards released by the EPA in December (also called MACT rules for the Maximum Achievable Control Technology criterion that the EPA applies) are right now forcing the retirement of many existing coal-electric plants, even though for the great majority of people current levels of exposure to Mercury are well into the hormetic range, meaning that mercury exposure from coal generation actually has significant net health benefits.

The EPA is unplugging the grid in order to make us less healthy, a lose-lose proposition. It’s just what the Bizarro-Earth eco-doctor ordered: “first do harm.” Wherever they manage to ensconce themselves the eco-religionists betray the established principles of their professions. In the government bureaucracy and in academia they jettison science fact in favor of eco-presumption, then in the courts they treat their eco-ideals as a higher standard to which the other branches are to be held. It’s models all the way down and thuggery all the way up.

The Ninth has the dubious distinction of having more of its decisions overturned by the Supreme Court than any other Court of Appeals — an 80% reversal rate. Rumor has it that the American Bar Association refers to it as the “Ninth Circus Court of Appeals”…

Hopefully that will all change in the next few months. Two things have to happen: Rio+20 needs to be a complete failure, and the Obama admin needs to be removed from power. Both are already on the ropes. Time for the knockout blow.

even though for the great majority of people current levels of exposure to Mercury are well into the hormetic range, meaning that mercury exposure from coal generation actually has significant net health benefits.

is quite a leap. “Significant health benefits” would indicate to me a whole pile of research pointing to this fact.

This will be the fourth time in the last ten years the court holds their annual conference in Hawaii. Apparently their passion for rule-making does not extend to rules about frugality with public money.

“Actually, we can go further and say that small increases in exposure to mercury are beneficial. This is due to the poorly understood but well documented phenomenon of “hormesis” whereby seemingly any substance that is harmful in higher doses will have a “hormetic range” where small enough doses will typically have a stimulative or prophylactic effect, presumably from the body gearing up to resist the assault.”

Hmm. So what about homeopathy? I believe also that radiation in small doses can be beneficial.

The reason for the “Carbon Tax” was to raise tax monies for broke governments. It is interesting that with the EPA rules, the EPA is terminating power plants that produce “Carbon”; and , therefore, reducing the “Tax Income” from the “Carbon Tax”.

Since the EPA is now causing a reduction in tax incomes to the governments, I would suggest that the EPA will be put on a very short leash. There will be a change by both the Courts [caused by the tax hungry government] and the other legislatures to repudiate the EPA’s efforts as being too extreme.

I would like to say that my comments are sarcasm, but we all know that any entity that affects tax incomes in a negative way will be crushed.

Obama gave reasons for why America is [became?] great. I would suggest that the reason American became great was the temporary elimination [1700-1900] of the Kings and Queens [government] of regulation, taxation, and oppressive religious rules.

Don’t worry, the rulers are back. This time with a world wide overreach. The methods are simple:
health care, EPA, global warming, carbon tax, etc. The bottom line is CONTROL under the guise of peace so that we don’t have a third world war.

How long have we been told that mercury in vaccines isn’t a health threat, that mercury in fillings (that coincidentally live in a perfect petri dish in your mouth) don’t pose a health threat, yet entire industries are brought to their knees on account of it?

While we’re focused here on the effect of judges on climate (money, in actuality), they also have far reaching influence on marriage, guns, health care, and privacy. That is why we should be fearful of a president “stacking the court” so as to have politically popular power in contrast to good constitutional interpretation.

Even if the California judges had good ideas based on scientific fact and economic pragmatism, (which they don’t,) you cannot bully people into being good.

A great example is the example of Prohibition. It seemed we’d save money and all be more healthy if alcohol was illegal, and therefore even sipping hard cider became against the US constitution for a while. Did it improve our society? No. It made people disrespect the law. It made crooks prosper and hurt good people.

Such “unintended consequences” are especially seen among a Free People, however even in cultures ruled by brute force people find ways to slip around the laws. When certain Moslem cultures closed down all taverns, and punished anyone caught drinking very harshly, what occurred was that all the taverns were replaced by coffee shops, and men drank coffee that could melt your teeth. There are old writings where Ottoman clerics bewail the bad influence such coffee shops were having on society.

While we need some laws against things like murder, for the most part people become more spiritual when they are this thing called “happy.” And, while happiness is a very great mystery to us all, it is more likely to be seen among Free People than people who are bullied.

Be careful about using hormesis as your main line of attack on mercury regulations. It may apply in this case, it may apply in many other cases, but maybe not. There is a stronger line of attack.

Willie Soon’s article on Monday reviews the excellent research in the Seychelles Islands, where the women on the coast who eat fish have about 10 times the mercury in their bodies than does the average woman in the US. The EPA rejected these articles, and instead used other research, which was tainted, to come up with the notion that tiny increments of methylmercury, in women who have 10 times less mercury than those in the Seychelles, will harm the IQ of a growing fetus. If anyone wants to know why EPA’s favored research was tainted, ask, and I’ll post about it.

But let us assume that EPA is right, just for the sake of argument. How much harm would be alleviated by the 90% reduction in utility mercury emissions that EPA has ordered under the MACT rule?

EPA actually tells us the answer in their Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) for the MACT rule. The answer is that a grand total of 512 IQ points, across the country, distributed across 240,000 children, is gained for the $11 billion dollar rule. EPA calculates that this comes out to 2/1,000 of an IQ point per child. The valuation of the added 512 IQ points, based upon increased lifetime earnings, is between half a million and about six million dollars annually.

“The first analysis (Section 5.2.1) estimates benefits from avoided IQ loss under various regulatory scenarios for all recreational freshwater anglers in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. The average effect on individual avoided IQ loss in 2016 is 0.00209 IQ points, with total nationwide benefits estimated between $0.5 and $6.1 million.“

You might ask, how is it possible for EPA to say that there are massive benefits from this rule, if the reason the rule was promulgated — mainly reduction of mercury emissions — has such tiny benefits?

The answer is that when you reduce mercury, you also reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, which turns into sulfates over hours and days. EPA claims that sulfate kills you — they’ve been claiming this for over two decades, starting from when there was almost no research on tiny airborne particles — and that each death, whether by days or months or years, is valued at about $9.5 million each.

Despite all you have heard for decades from the Sierra Club and EPA, sulfate is likely benign. It isn’t biologically active, which distinguishes sulfate from many other tiny particulates. A 39 page review article of all the toxicology of sulfates in 2003, by R Schlesinger and F Cassee, found no adverse impacts. That article is called: ATMOSPHERIC SECONDARY INORGANIC PARTICULATE MATTER: THE TOXICOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE AS A BASIS FOR HEALTH EFFECTS RISK ASSESSMENT. It is behind a paywall at Inhalation Toxicology, unfortunately.

I would think the ninth circuit would get tired of the US Supreme Court overturning their decisions and start using actual jurisprudence. Of all the appellate courts, the ninth is the most overturned. If I were a judge on one of the other circuits and a case came before me similar to one ruled on by the ninth, I would read their ruling so that I would know what not to argue in the decision. They occasionally get the low hanging fruit right (cases that probably should never have been brought to them in the first place – but some of the lower courts out there are worse.) People wonder why businesses are fleeing the west coast, rule of law might be part of it. Would you want to set up shop in an area where your legal costs are going to be through the roof because every litigation winds up at the Supreme Court?(after working through all the whacked out lower courts and getting bogus decisions – lawyers getting rich at every level).

“A complete restructuring of society is what Obama advocated in a 2001 interview on a Chicago public radio station.

According to Politico.com, in that interview, Obama – “reflecting on the Warren Court’s successes and failures in helping to usher-in civil rights – said, ‘I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples.’ ”

He has it backward. The Creator already endowed African-American people with these rights, which is precisely the argument powerfully made by Martin Luther King Jr.

Any rights that are “vested” in people by other people may be removed by the same or future people. Endowed rights are “unalienable” and what America did was to finally recognize those rights.

The distinction is crucial ..”

…
“Obama thought the Warren Court should have “broken free” from the constraints placed on the Constitution and the courts by the Founding Fathers. This is remarkable hubris.

Obama said the Constitution mostly “says what the states can’t do to you . . . what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.” That’s because the Constitution is about liberty and protecting citizens from oppressive and invasive government.

This is scary stuff. That it is only now surfacing is another reminder of the poor job the mainstream media have done in vetting Obama.”

This was written before the election – which Constitution did Obama swear to uphold, the real one or his own, the one someone must have taught him and which he then taught?

Obama doesn’t know the Constitution. How many judges do? There was a quote a while back from a judge saying the Constitution was whatever he ruled it to be.

But isn’t this a “dissenting opinion”? Meaning we lost the case to green judges? I’m happy to see at least one judge on the notoriously activist 9th circuit understands his role. However, it doesn’t amount to a hill of beans at this point.

Hughes’ Hubris: Is the Constitution “What the Judges Say it is”?
“But any written document, like a contract, is subject to interpretation. So, how about the Constitution? How should it be interpreted? Former Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes provides a modern answer to that question. Hughes once stated in a speech in 1907 that “we are under a Constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is…” Today, though Hughes is dead, he leads the chorus of jurists and judicial activists that seek societal change and desire the sanction of the Constitution to do it.

Well, is Hughes right? Is the Constitution whatever the judges say it is? Does the Constitution have no meaning independent of the jurists who interpret it? If so, get ready because if the Supremes are the voice of the Constitution, then we no longer live under the rule of law—we have government by tribunal. If the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, then they can make it say whatever they want. “Up” becomes “down” under Hughes’ constitution.”

“The Constitution has a meaning that is independent of the judges and attorneys who mull over it and that meaning is rooted in the historical intent of the drafters of the document. If the American people and their representatives believe that some features of the document are outdated or simply mistaken, then the people and their representatives can lawfully amend it. But let’s not have any amending via judicial decisions where justices make the Constitution say whatever they want it to say.”

Judges are not politically accountable, as Judge Milan Smith says, but surely they have then to be personally accountable?

That’s how it was under the old Brehon Law in Ireland – a judge was personally liable for his decision. If shown to be a bad decision he had to pay recompense for it.

“Those not so attached lived simply on the fees of their profession, and many eminent brehons became wealthy. The legal rules, as set forth in the Law Books, were commonly very complicated and mixed up with a variety of’ technical terms; and many forms had to be gone through and many circumstances taken into account, all legally essential: so that no outsider could hope to master their intricacies. The brehon had to be very careful; for he was himself liable for damages, besides forfeiting his fee, if he delivered a false or unjust judgement.”

Legislative authority was outsourced to regulators a long time ago. Both parties are guilty. Regulations can be passed without the scrutiny of the legislative process. Legislators can avoid guilt by blaming regulators while at the same time advocating that they keep their seat in order to keep an eye on the regulators. It’s a great game and we lose every time.

After the release of Methyl Mercury in Minimata the concern over Mercury contamination of water was clearly rational.

However, the dosage of mercury that causes harm is not so clear cut.
The reason for the ambiguity being the belief that mercury is concentrated an aqautic life until it is stored in fish fat. This is then eaten by people at high concentrations. Which is very bad, obviously.

Yet, despite the theory being taught in textbooks, I have seen no evidence that mercury does accumulate in fish.

Water is toxic to the body in large volumes, and can kill if you drink too much. However, it is both beneficial and necessary in smaller volumes. The same is generally true of most substances. There is an optimum dose, above and below this dose the effect is harmful. Small amounts of UV radiation are beneficial. Large amounts will kill.

For example, food. Too much food and too little food both result in poor health and ultimately death. The body requires trace minerals. Without these the body develops cravings for food. Obesity can result from eating foods grow in mineral poor soils.

There is a growing body of evidence that allergies may be the result of super clean environments, that the body requires exposure to a moderately hostile environment. Otherwise, the body’s defenses turn inward, looking for something to attack. Auto-immune disease is one result.

Perfection is the enemy of good. The cost of producing a good environment is low. The cost of producing a perfect environment is astronomically high. In seeking to create a perfect environment we become slaves to the cost.

Where is the benefit in creating an environment that is so clean that improvement saves only 1 life, if thousands of lives are ruined in the process?

You can’t help but feel that bureaucratic organisations like the EPA, are in effect drawing up green regulations, which in reality should have been the result of legislation but they know Congress would never pass such laws.

It’s government by an unelected body and it looks like the judiciary is beginning to put its foot down on it.

Of course they are! Do we really need a dissenting judge to say it in order for us to realize it?

I heard a long term congressman admit (after his retirement) that most of the laws past by congress since the onset of the Great Depression are unconstitutional, or at least extra-constitutional.

Again…of course they are! Most of the laws have been rationalized with the “promote the general welfare” clause in the preamble to the Constitution. In order to do that, they needed to change the meaning of the word ‘promote’ to mean ‘provide’, and the word ‘general’ to mean ‘individual’ or ‘group’. In other words…the US government runs with the mandate to “provide the individual and group welfare”; a collectivist ideal that must have the Founding Fathers spinning in their graves! Politicians and judges, with the consent of the masses (who prefer free-stuff over free-dom), have made the constitution irrelevant, which will soon lead to the downfall of this nation.

Predicting climate change is very complicated. There is a lot that we don’t know. But we have many examples of how to destroy an economy, a nation and the spirit of the people. We know how that happens. The US, and the West in general, are certainly on that road.

The sad part about this article is that the judge’s comments were the dissenting opinion. The majority opinion held otherwise. Bureaucrats, funded by taxpayer money, or increasingly by funds borrowed in the taxpayer’s name are ultimately driving the bus we are riding in, and they are immune to the damage caused by their actions, because the government cannot go out of business, no matter how poorly it is run.

The smaller the government, less bureaucrats making regulations, the lower the taxes, the better the economy functions. When things aren’t going well in business, you need to lay off workers. Why not apply this logic to government? When the economy is in the toilet, when government isn’t doing its job, cut the government. Lay off the public sector, cut costs, free up the economy and let people get back to work.

And for those who say you can’t cut government, that we need the public service, that is the “too big to fail” argument the banker’s and car makers used to get trillions from Obama when he was running for office.

Ronald Regan fired all the traffic controllers in the US. That got folk’s attention. Sun Tzu used a similar approach when he taught the emperor’s concubines to march. There is no such thing as “too big to fail”. History shows time and again how the mighty have fallen.

David S says:
June 6, 2012 at 6:43 am
I doubt that mercury or arsenic or other toxins are beneficial at any level
===========
Here is what wiki has to say about arsenic:

Medical use

During the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, a number of arsenic compounds have been used as medicines, including arsphenamine (by Paul Ehrlich) and arsenic trioxide (by Thomas Fowler). Arsphenamine as well as neosalvarsan was indicated for syphilis and trypanosomiasis, but has been superseded by modern antibiotics. Arsenic trioxide has been used in a variety of ways over the past 500 years, but most commonly in the treatment of cancer. The US Food and Drug Administration in 2000 approved this compound for the treatment of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia that is resistant to ATRA.[42] It was also used as Fowler’s solution in psoriasis.[43] Recently new research has been done in locating tumours using arsenic-74 (a positron emitter). The advantages of using this isotope instead of the previously used iodine-124 is that the signal in the PET scan is clearer as the body tends to transport iodine to the thyroid gland producing a lot of noise.[44]

In subtoxic doses, soluble arsenic compounds act as stimulants, and were once popular in small doses as medicine by people in the mid-18th century.[9

Dr. Lurtz says:
June 6, 2012 at 5:43 am
Since the EPA is now causing a reduction in tax incomes to the governments, I would suggest that the EPA will be put on a very short leash. There will be a change by both the Courts [caused by the tax hungry government] and the other legislatures to repudiate the EPA’s efforts as being too extreme.

Sarcasm duly noted, Doc — but what taxes the EPA’s actions would reduce would be more than offset by the size of the fines they’re allowed to levy. I knew a horse breeder in Hopewell, NJ, who dropped a piece of concrete culvert into a drainage ditch on his property, then packed gravel between the sides of the ditch and the pipe to have a makeshift bridge as a shortcut between two of his paddocks. EPA hit him with a $20,000 fine for “interfering with a watercourse” and tacked on an additional $10,000 per day for every day the bridge remained in place.

The double-whammy was the inspector wrote him up on a Thursday, filed the paperwork that Friday, and served him with the notification on Monday afternoon. The breeder thus accrued $50,000 in fines before he was even aware the EPA had been snooping around.

EPA have established regulations for mercury levels in water that are based on likely effects on sensitive species. Studies of plants, vertebrates, and invertebrates were used to establish the acute and chronic exposure levels allowed. These levels are not fixed, but also depend on the hardness of the water [1]. The concept is Ca2+ and Mg2+ can displace Hg2+ in sites of mercury biouptake in the body of organisms.

Judges have gone off the rails on water flow through the Delta as well. Native species have adapted to salt water invading the Delta durning low flow months of September and October after the snow has melted in the Sierra Nevada, so there is no runoff, and before the rain starts. The fact is, dams release water during the summer and already reduce the salinity of water in the Delta beyond natural flow levels in dry summer-fall months as shown by Kratzer and Shelton, Fig 5 [2]. The USGS recognize this effect as shown by Ingebritsen and Ikehara in a figure on page 92 [3], in which current and historical salinity comparisons are shown for wet and dry years.

The real problem with the Delta is it is no longer a natural structure, but has been re-engineered for over 100 years. It has already lost its biodiversity. It could be restored to historical condition, or it could be used as a water conveyance system, but probably not both. The policy imposed by judges is not based on good science, and requires us to waste water in violation of state law. We are supposed to maintain the “co-equal goals” of environment and water supply. That’s like air-conditioning your house with the windows open.

The Delta is an estuary, and naturally is brackish at times. Salt water used to intrude beyond Sacramento in the summer. It makes little sense to use the Delta as a water conveyance if we have to worry about non-native species or irrationally worry about the survival of native species clearly adapted already to life in a Delta having variable salinity. We need an alternate conveyance system to move water around the Delta to the pumps of the state and federal projects. It is not clear how much longer the 500,000 acres under cultivation in the Delta can be used. They are not sinking, but actually are decomposing. The peet soil is reverting to CO2 resulting in island elevation drops of at least 2.5 cm per year, and historically much higher [3].

Judicial intervention was supposedly necessary to save the native smelt, and other species. It protected the interests of Delta farmers and Southern California water consumers, but destroyed the economy in the west San Joaquin Valley. 300,000 acres of the Westlands Water District were sacrificed, including orchards that take years to grow. Water supply problems stemming from bad court rulings based on poor science continue to impact agriculture in California and harm our economy [4].

For the medical and eco-green fraterneties to accept the reality of “hormetic” effects would mean the review of ALL low-dosage regulations and ALL legal findings of wrong, including their financial assessments or penalties, that resulted from applying a “linear, no-threshold” principle (as explained on previous WUWT blogs).

If we thought the climate wars have been something, the Hormetic Effects wars would be Shock and Awe.

No saying I disagree, but just saying anyone who proposes a threshold of harm will be accused of determining the cost of a human life, of promoting genocide, of promoting Profits Over People, Big Business Over The Individual, of Evil Over Good.

But what a transformation we would have! This is one social revolution I could get behind. We’d even end up with a review of Spanking Your Child vs Letting Him Get Away With Murder.

Bill Tuttle says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:13 am
taxes the EPA’s actions would reduce would be more than offset by the size of the fines they’re allowed to levy.
========
Unless they are adding value, those fines represent money removed from the economy, and typically spend on less productive activities. Someone, somewhere will see reduced orders and thus reduced jobs. These reduced jobs mean fewer order and fewer jobs for other suppliers, which continues in a vicious circle.

Eventually the economy grinds to a halt as there is no incentive to do anything. Rather, there is a huge incentive to do nothing out of fear of attracting further fines. Eventually people give up and move, which is what happened in Europe where large portions of the the population left to travel to the “new world”.

…and what do you do when the EPA intentionally seeks to con the public into thinking a regulation is about Mercury when it isn’t?

The Obama administration’s EPA is about to kill 180,000 to 215,000 jobs by 2015 with GDP losses totaling as much as $112 billion and with additional total household disposable income losses of as much as $71 billion to implement an EPA regulation that is already regulated by other parts of the Clean Air Act.

The EPA named the regulation “Mercury and Toxics Standards” but the regulation has nothing to do with reductions in mercury emissions. EPA admits the benefits of the rule are 99.996 percent related to particulate matter which is already regulated by other parts of the Clean Air Act.

The economy doesn’t stand a chance with Obama and his administration but there is some hope that Congress will finally govern the EPA.

Federal courts are supposed to look at the constitutionality of the rules, whether or not they are sweeping does not make it illegal. If any state wants to regulate whatever though proper democratic means satisfying the constitutional requirements, they should be allowed to do so. Of course 9 th circuit tend to be liberal in their rulings, but the Supreme Court itself (with a conservative majority) authorized EPA to regulate CO2 emissions, when the EPA under the Bush administration claimed they do not have the power.

Willie Soon is an astrophysicist, not an expert of mercury toxicity. Unlike the claim in this article, human mercury emissions are not dwarfed by natural emissions. Seychelles Islands study only shows that some nutrients in certain fish has more beneficial effects than the adverse effects of mercury – does not show mercury is harmless.

I guess subjecting people to VX, serin or hydrogen cyanide gas is a beneficial things under the hormesis theory.

It is about time someone called these addled tyrants out. Being an appellate Judge does something to the minds that is not good. Not ever having to be held accountable, they assume a posture and attitude of self-righteous omniscience. They are easily influenced by praise and adulation, which the elite environmentalists plentifully provide when the ‘right’ decision is made.

….Well, is Hughes right? Is the Constitution whatever the judges say it is? Does the Constitution have no meaning independent of the jurists who interpret it? If so, get ready because if the Supremes are the voice of the Constitution, then we no longer live under the rule of law—we have government by tribunal. If the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, then they can make it say whatever they want. “Up” becomes “down” under Hughes’ constitution.” …..
___________________________________
Myrrh the Constitution and the Rule of Law went out the window when President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the infamous “court-packing” scheme when the Supreme Court was declaring much of the New Deal unconstitutional. Soon after his court-packing scheme went down to defeat, Justice Roberts voted with the other side in the watershed case of West Coast Hotel vs. Parrish in 1937. that case upholds the constitutionality of minimum wage interfering with the rights of contract law.

Wickard v. Filburn is the case that has given the US government so much more power. Power NOT given in the Actual Constitution.

Roscoe Filburn… exceeded his acreage allotment for that planting season under the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938….Mr. Filburn challenged the penalty, and the entire Agricultural Adjustment Act, as a violation of the constitutional limits on Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce.

This is the critical case that allow the federal government to regulate what you do in your own home.

Filburn’s Legacy
Jim Chen University of Louisville – Louis D. Brandeis School of Law

Abstract:
Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942), represented a pivotal moment in the Supreme Court’s effort to determine the scope of Congress’s power “[t]o regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” Together with NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp., 301 U.S. 1 (1937), and United States v. Darby, 312 U.S. 100 (1941), Filburn is widely thought to have marked a turning point in commerce clause jurisprudence. Under Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the Supreme Court severely undermined what had been regarded as the post-New Deal consensus on the scope of Congress’s commerce power. This reconsideration of commerce clause doctrine warrants careful reexamination of Wickard v. Filburn….http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=901026

Even though he Ninth Circuit Court’s rulings have no direct bearing on the good folks here in Oklahoma, that court’s rulings have added greatly to our state by sending us many ambitious and hard working folks who possess a love of liberty and have found a home here among like- minded people.

So, Thank you Ninth Circuit– keep destroying the fortunes and spirit of those in your bailiwick as you codify your socialist dreams of utopia- your best and brightest are deserting you and we welcome them with open arms.

Although I am sceptical of the concept of “hormesis”, (given that what I have read does not lend itself to falsification for the most part), it is accepted biochemistry that nearly all metals are both required as co-factors for enzymes (and thus needed as minerals) and are toxic at higher levels.

Using metals in treatments (referred to above) is usually taking advantage of the toxic-level effects, but targeting specific cells. Cancer and psoriasis treatments fall into this category, as do using elemental metals as antibacterial or anti-fungal agents. Care should be taken in quoting these uses to support level of environmental exposure, however, as they are designed for short term use.

Most issues with regulatory agencies setting levels are as a result of two factors. The first is the development of assays and equipment that can detect metals or other “toxic” compounds at extremely low doses, thus contributing to the mis-perception that levels are rising either in the environment or in the human body.

The second is the requirement for the developer of a new product to secure a market share for their product. We have run out of superlatives for something being better, so now the most effective form of marketing is to scare the target audience about competing products. As soon as a manufacturer begins marketing a product with “no added XYZ” there is an implicit assumption that the competing product both has XYZ added and that XYZ is bad for you. All it then takes is some astro-turfing to create a “consumer organization” to raise concern over levels of XYZ and suddenly not only is there market demand for “no added XYZ”, but regulatory agencies can show how responsive they are by lowering permitted levels.

Call me cynical, but I have seen this work too many times to believe it is an accident.

Excellent article. And let’s not forget, the Obama administration and the EPA, while forcing the closing of coal fired powerplants, supposedly to reduce the already extremely low levels of environmental mercury, is forcing all of us to get rid of incandescent and install mercury filled fluorescent light bulbs in our homes. I would say this proves that its NOT about lowering mercury levels in the environment as to why the EPA is forcing the closing of the power plants,

“Perfection is the enemy of good. The cost of producing a good environment is low. The cost of producing a perfect environment is astronomically high. In seeking to create a perfect environment we become slaves to the cost.

Where is the benefit in creating an environment that is so clean that improvement saves only 1 life, if thousands of lives are ruined in the process?”

Indeed! Often in the attempt to create that perfect environment which may save one life, society not only ruins many other lives, but actually can inadvertently kill many others. Since the deaths are not DIRECTLY related to societies actions, they are not counted. DDT is the primary example. DDT can dramatically curb deaths from malaria, but Europe will not purchase food from countries that allow DDT to be used. The people there have a choice: prevent malaria or sell their food and make a living. They can’t do both. Either way they suffer and die. In the meantime, there has never been a case of even one death or illness from small amounts DDT on food.

The EPA goes to absurd levels trying to connect the actions of others to illness and death, but feel no obligation to look at the great harm their own actions have on people. I am quite sure the EPA has ’caused’ far more deaths than sulfate particles, DDT and CO2 combined!

Rob Potter says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:46 am
Although I am sceptical of the concept of “hormesis”, (given that what I have read does not lend itself to falsification for the most part), it is accepted biochemistry that nearly all metals are both required as co-factors for enzymes (and thus needed as minerals) and are toxic at higher levels.

My yuppie neighbor-across-the-street hasn’t spoken to me since I casually mentioned there’s a higher level of arsenic in his bottle of imported mineral water than the EPA allows in his tap water.

how about rights? is a little bit of violation beneficial for the victim?
the orwellian creole being used, here, is incapable of resolving the only issue that matters, without which there can be no comprehension of the only issue that matters.
there can be no right to violate a man’s rights.
serious discussion of political religion instead of immediately and exclusively addressing the only significant principle that matters is, of course, beneficial for the rapist who can say ‘well, it’s only stuck in you just an inch – that’s beneficial – and besides, you negotiated the transaction – so it’s a business deal- heck, you paid for it, ho.’

Homeopathy has an interesting history. Samuel Hahnemann found through anecdotal evidence that small doses of substances that caused symptoms emulating a certain condition, would (apparently) result in a cure for that condition. Not content with discovering a medication or two, he elevated his “findings” into a general law, the “Law of Similars.” At that point, he went off the rails, if he wasn’t already.

Hormesis is at first counterintuitive and has gained acceptance slowly among toxicologists. However, there is a great deal of evidence with regard to many toxic substances that support it. The difference between toxicology and climate science is that toxicologists were skeptical of this from the start (as most scientists are about most things) and only began to come around when substantial results from many independent scientists were available. In climate science, there seems to have been a brief initial period of skepticism, but as soon as the advantages of CAGW were appreciated (research funding, primarily), it disappeared. In addition, publishing on hormesis did not hurt one’s career and was not seen as a risk to toxicologists, who mostly try to be very objective because the field as a whole is funded both by government and by industry. I think it is a field in which the attitude is that we need to be extra careful and wary of bias, because most things that we do have policy implications.

One other point is that hormesis is not a justification of homeopathy. Homeopathy relies on vanishingly small doses, which are below the level of even a hormetic effect.

ferd berple says (June 6, 2012 at 7:14 am): “Perfection is the enemy of good. The cost of producing a good environment is low. The cost of producing a perfect environment is astronomically high. In seeking to create a perfect environment we become slaves to the cost.”

As the late Julian Simon wrote in his book The Ultimate Resource 2, the object of washing dishes is not to get them perfectly clean, but rather to get them acceptably dirty. The EPA version of a dishwasher would be a combination autoclave/sandblaster. :-)

“Significant health benefits” would indicate to me a whole pile of research pointing to this fact.

There is indeed a huge pile. Calabrese, who was at the very top of the field of toxicology before he started studying hormesis, has been the ringleader for 20 years. Hormesis is now the most widely accepted if not the dominant model in the field of toxicology. In particular, the competing models (the threshold model where harmful effects are seen above a threshold and no lower dose effect is considered, and linear extrapolation to zero, where harmful effects are considered to still occur at lower than measurable levels) are both thoroughly discredited. It is the regulators who don’t want to acknowledge this because it would strip them of the source of their power, which at present is cleaning stuff up to minute levels, which according to hormesis actually has negative net health effects.

So what about homeopathy? I believe also that radiation in small doses can be beneficial.

Homeopathy is something quite different, where the first discoverer of hormetic effects tried to use it as a basis for cures. The stimulative effects are much too small for that. Hormesis can reduce your risks of coming down with bad stuff but it cannot help you very much once you get a tumor or whatever. Risks of coming down with stuff is exactly what EPA regulations are about, so here hormetic effects are crucial.

As for the benefits of small doses of radiation, that is a well documented effect, and one of the few that has been verified to be a persistent effect. Most toxocological studies don’t look at the time course of the dose-response so there is not a lot of data on whether hormesis effects persist, but radiation studies look at parts of the world that have high background radiation and find that they have the lowest cancer rates, which does show persistence.

I suspect that many who post here are not familiar with biomedical literature. It is now easy and free to search MEDLINE on a keyword such as ‘hormesis’, if you can remember the word ‘pubmed’. A google of ‘pubmed’ brings up the MEDLINE start page as the first hit.
The MEDLINE starting page has a search box at the top, and entering ‘hormesis’ produces 859 hits at the moment. Note the filter choices and the related hits features. MEDLINE is free and no registration is required.
The wikipedia article on hormesis gives an overview, but one should be aware that the resident editors are often biased. The article on radiation hormesis explains the controversial aspects:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
The classical author on radiation hormesis is T. D. Luckey, who published a CRC monograph I read some years ago. There is extensive evidence that such effects exist, and the ‘official’ opinion on hormesis is a function of regulatory propaganda. The regulators fear with some reason that any recognition of hormesis will encourage quackery.
The Taiwan Cobalt-60 accident is mentioned in the wiki article and suggests that low-rate photonic exposure activates DNA repair, thus reducing the incidence of cancer. Note that high-rate exposures such as CT scans are another matter, since normal repair rates would be overwhelmed.

Following the Preamble, the very first sentence of the Constitution says: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States which shall consist of a Senate and a House of Representatives.” And nowhere does the Constitution give Congress authority to delegate that power. When government agencies pass regulations which carry the force of law without Congressional legislation that violates the Constitution, plain and simple. But if we the people don’t demand that government obey the Constitution they won’t. And we will lose the Constitution and all of the rights it protects. By this process, America can be transformed from a free country to a totalitarian dictatorship. And that unfortunately is happening.

given that what I have read [hormesis] does not lend itself to falsification for the most part

Just to clarify, yes hormesis certainly can be falsified. It is the finding of a u-shaped or j-shaped low-dose response curve, where negative outcomes are reduced below background levels at very low levels, before rising as the dose rises to the threshold for measurable harmful effects.

The threshold model of dose-response was the original default because testing regimens had to become more sensitive before responses to lower doses could be measured. That’s why it is not coincidental that it was a leader in the field–Calabrese–who became the pioneer of the hormesis “revolution.” He was a leader in using the most sensitive new testing regimens, kind of like Galileo having the most powerful telescope.

Now everybody has good telescopes and they all are seeing hormesis everywhere, but the regulators don’t want to hear it.

A few years back I read about a study done in the UK that evaluated young children on various metrics based on the (trace) levels of mercury found in their blood. Interestingly, they found a significant positive correlation between mercury levels and IQ; that is, higher levels of mercury corresponded to higher IQs.

IIRC, interviews done as part of the study indicated that mercury levels corresponded well with the amount of seafood the parents reported serving the children. Of course, these results do not establish any particular chain of causality – it’s possible that a better diet led to better brain development, or simply that brighter parents (who have brighter children) fed their children more fish. But at any rate, it is very hard to find any significant (in practical sense as well as the statistical) negative effect from mercury at these levels.

What is interesting is the FDA has estabished a recommended daily intake (RDI) for various metals, many of which are toxic in heavier quantities. The FDA considers them necessary for proper health in humans. The include zinc, selenium, copper, chromium and molybdenum. Toxicity does not mean they should be totally avoided. Quite to the contrary, they are needed.

jorgekafkazar says:
June 6, 2012 at 9:46 am
Homeopathy has an interesting history. Samuel Hahnemann found through anecdotal evidence that small doses of substances that caused symptoms emulating a certain condition, would (apparently) result in a cure for that condition. Not content with discovering a medication or two, he elevated his “findings” into a general law, the “Law of Similars.” At that point, he went off the rails, if he wasn’t already.
=========================================================
I wonder if he intitially stumbled on hormesis but didn’t realize what he’d found. As I understand it, the theory behind homeopathy is to stimulate the symptom of an illness to “jump start” the body’s natural defenses with the thought that symptoms are your body’s way of dealing with the problem. Say, you sneeze due to an allergy. You sneeze because your body is trying to get rid of the allergen. If you get your body “ready to sneeze” using something else that would make you sneeze then you’ll clear the allergen that much faster, in theory anyway. Maybe what he started with caused the symptoms because it was the actual problem and hormesis is waht gave the positive results? Just a thought. I don’t know the history of homeopathy.

PS to my PS I’ve nothing against honest lawyers. My both my late uncles were lawyers. One of them was a law professor and wrote at least one law book.
We need judges that will “rule by the rules” no matter their personal convictions. If a “rule” is flawed, we have the amendment proccess to fix it.

“The smaller the government, less bureaucrats making regulations, the lower the taxes, the better the economy functions. When things aren’t going well in business, you need to lay off workers. Why not apply this logic to government? When the economy is in the toilet, when government isn’t doing its job, cut the government. Lay off the public sector, cut costs, free up the economy and let people get back to work.”

That was the specific remedy employed in the Depression of 1919 – 1921. The federal government slashed employment and spending by more than 60%. The result? In less than 18 months unemployment fell from almost 12% to below 3%, and the greatest expansion in U.S. economic history followed.

But when the Great Depression began, the success of the 1921 remedy was disregarded. Government grew instead of getting smaller. The result? What should have been another 18 month depression turned into the Great Depression and lasted until WWII. We are making exactly the same mistakes now, and the results are predictably the same: long term high unemployment and economic stagnation.

But when the Great Depression began, the success of the 1921 remedy was disregarded. Government grew instead of getting smaller. The result? What should have been another 18 month depression turned into the Great Depression and lasted until WWII. We are making exactly the same mistakes now, and the results are predictably the same: long term high unemployment and economic stagnation.
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Being charitable, that is always the result of misplaced compassion. Which is an emotional disease that primarily infects the political left.

Curiousgeorge says:
June 6, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Being charitable, that is always the result of misplaced compassion. Which is an emotional disease that primarily infects the political left.
=======================================================
Being charitable isn’t the problem. Being “charitable” using someone else’s money is the problem.

…..That was the specific remedy employed in the Depression of 1919 – 1921. The federal government slashed employment and spending by more than 60%. The result? In less than 18 months unemployment fell from almost 12% to below 3%, and the greatest expansion in U.S. economic history followed.
_________________________________
That would be Silent Cal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903520204576484673631290098.html

In an economic climate with few jobs and cutbacks on basic city services such as police protection and firefighting, you would think cities and states would be overjoyed when someone was willing to open up a new business, bringing with him jobs, economic vitality and tax revenues. You might think that, but you’d be wrong.

Instead, cities and states stifle new small businesses at every turn, burying them in mounds of paperwork; lengthy, expensive and arbitrary permitting processes; pointless educational requirements for occupations; or even just outright bans….

This is a very ominous sign because the bureaucrats politicians and even the voters have lost sight of what fuels their cities, towns, states and countries and that is commerce.

Great nations rise and fall. The people go from bondage to spiritual truth, to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, from dependence back again to bondage.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years.

The above quotation is old, and most people have attributed it to Alexander Fraser Tytler, Lord Woodhouselee (1747-1813),

I have often thought it is the weight of accumulating laws, the bureaucracy to enforce them and the taxes that pays for it all that finally strangles commerce completely and results in the civilization collapsing.

Time to start repealing lots of laws and cutting the bureaucracy to the bone or we will be heading down the tubes like every other 200 year old civilization to a nasty totalitarian dictatorship. This time it will be a global dictatorship and it is already forming via “Global Governance” and Agenda 21.

Hoser says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:15 am
“Water supply problems stemming from bad court rulings based on poor science continue to impact agriculture in California and harm our economy [4].”
—————-
Isn’t water Dr. Gleick’s game? Guess they need him back.
Could water be the next CAGW….UN’s stab at a people control vehicle?

Curiousgeorge says:
June 6, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Being charitable, that is always the result of misplaced compassion. Which is an emotional disease that primarily infects the political left.
=======================================================
Being charitable isn’t the problem. Being “charitable” using someone else’s money is the problem.
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You misunderstand me. I was being charitable in describing the situation. As opposed to just calling them idiots. ;)

….Well, is Hughes right? Is the Constitution whatever the judges say it is? Does the Constitution have no meaning independent of the jurists who interpret it? If so, get ready because if the Supremes are the voice of the Constitution, then we no longer live under the rule of law—we have government by tribunal. If the Constitution is whatever the judges say it is, then they can make it say whatever they want. “Up” becomes “down” under Hughes’ constitution.” …..
___________________________________Myrrh the Constitution and the Rule of Law went out the window when President Franklin Roosevelt proposed the infamous “court-packing” scheme when the Supreme Court was declaring much of the New Deal unconstitutional.

Ruling that arguing from “the right” to impose market restrictions interstate carried to its logical conclusion said the farmer couldn’t grow wheat to feed himself because outside of the quota, he’d have to buy it to not upset the quota…

Hardly surprising then:

“Appellee’s claim is not that his quota represented less than a fair share of the national quota, but that the Fifth Amendment requires that he be free from penalty for planting wheat and disposing of his crop as he sees fit.

We do not agree.”

I looked up Jackson who gave the ruling – odd fellow, ruling for preemptive strike against a Communist organisation in Dennis v United States, and this: “Justice Jackson and procedural due process

Justice Jackson was one of the two great defenders (along with Justice Frankfurter) of procedural due process, for the rule of law that protects members of the public from overreaching by government agencies. One of his hymns to due process is often quoted:[43]

Which I need a lawyer to translate for me – what is substantive that they should bend to Government’s will?

“Insofar as it is technical law, it must be a specialized responsibility within the competence of the judiciary on which they do not bend before political branches of the Government, as they should on matters of policy which compromise substantive law.”

I can’t see (bearing in mind I’m not sure I understand what’s being said by him in this statement thought great), how he could present the ruling against Filburn worked out to the tiny convoluted end that he couldn’t feed himself, if Jackson is really was one of two great defenders “of procedural due process, for the rule of law that protects members of the public from overreaching by government agencies”

So it’s not that the agencies are exceeding the Constitution, but only concern for correct procedure?

“Not only was the philosophy of the New Deal, with its elements of socialism and fascism, alien to the principles of liberty and free markets on which our nation was founded, it was also in violation of the principles of limited government established by the Framers in the Constitution. That was why the Supreme Court was declaring much of the New Deal unconstitutional ”

“Roosevelt based his order on the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act, which gave the president the power to prevent people from “hoarding gold” during a time of war. Of course, the United States was not at war in 1933, but Roosevelt claimed that it was a “national emergency” and Congress and the courts meekly bowed to the executive.

In earlier times, such an order would have been met with outrage, as freedom-loving Americans would have rebelled against such a confiscatory order from Washington. Certainly, no president before the Progressive Era would have ordered such action for fear of impeachment or being voted out of office at the next election. However, by the time Roosevelt took office in 1933, the courts already had upheld government restrictions on freedom of speech (especially during World War I) and Congress had begun the unconstitutional delegation of some of its lawmaking powers to the executive branch.”

“Progressives who dominated the Roosevelt administration held that the principal cause of the economic downturn was falling prices, along with falling wages. Furthermore, they believed that the cause of falling prices was “overproduction,” so the “cure” was to find ways to limit the production of goods. Thus, in the minds of the New Dealers, the government needed to restrict production and force up prices. As prices rose, so would wages, and high wages would bring the country out of the Depression. For inspiration and direction, they used the economic programs of Italy’s fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, as their model.”

Previous to discovering about 1913 and the bankers cartel takeover, from what I knew of the American Constitution detail from discussions and such I was under the impression that Americans understood it, they could spot the violations in various events discussed, and, optimistically I thought they’re not actually promoting it as the alternative to democracy etc. because they simply take it for granted, and with a bit of reminder that putting it into words would help the rest of us.., but, I see now that they were only angry at its loss, they didn’t know what they had compared with other systems. Maybe it’s because the attacks against it have been going on for so long by your own Government and Congress has done nothing of value to stand against this, that really all of it’s been lost – how could the Patriot Act come into existence otherwise?

Looks like we’ll all, who have the Common Law system, have to start from scratch retrieving it. They’ve been very thorough in hiding it from us.

Curiousgeorge says:
June 6, 2012 at 5:28 pm
Being charitable, that is always the result of misplaced compassion. Which is an emotional disease that primarily infects the political left.
=======================================================
Being charitable isn’t the problem. Being “charitable” using someone else’s money is the problem.
*******************************************************************************
You misunderstand me. I was being charitable in describing the situation. As opposed to just calling them idiots. ;)
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Yes, I did miss misunderstand. Sorry. No harm in making the same point twice.8-)

@Gunga Din. Your name doesn’t sound to be American, but your words and thoughts most certainly do.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks. Where I worked in the mid 80’s the maintenance staff used CB radios. Someone gave me that “handle” since I did the water and wastewater treatment. I tried not to get my responsibilities mixed up.

Chuck Nolan says:
June 6, 2012 at 6:08 pm
Hoser says:
June 6, 2012 at 8:15 am
“Water supply problems stemming from bad court rulings based on poor science continue to impact agriculture in California and harm our economy [4].”
—————-Isn’t water Dr. Gleick’s game? Guess they need him back.
Could water be the next CAGW….UN’s stab at a people control vehicle?

Certainly looks like it, in England recently they declared a drought – and then it rained big time which made them look silly – but the problem is not lack of water, but refusing to sanction the building of more reservoirs to cope with the population expansion from immigrants, and no money now that water has been privatised to repair the infrastructure (corporations have to work to the rule that profits must be maximised for shareholders), so the leaky pipes just get leakier. There’s no water shortage.

Not sure if all, but I think France owns all of Britain’s water. When Britain made the first step into joining in the EU forerunner, only economic union at that time, not political, France was given the production of English apples – which didn’t have the same taste as English climate perfect for apples, France too hot – we had to import cardboard tasting Golden Delicious from France, and all english orchards were grubbed up. Really, not kidding. A very few left which weren’t allowed to retail. On top of that all our vast varieties of fruit and veg were outlawed, seed couldn’t be sold on the open market and lots more like this, only approved veg and seeds on the EU list were allowed. Private gardening clubs were started where old and tasty and sometimes knobbly.., against the packing uniformity of the bland veg sanction, were grown in private gardens and club members could choose a couple of packets of seed a year from what was produced, still going. There’s been some clawing back at local market level, but the centuries of variety of apple and veg growing was basically wiped out.

And the big corporation water takeover started earlier in countries easy to manipulate, it’s a real horror story:

As for Haiti – the UN force effectively rules it and the millions collected by charities for the restructure after the quake show effectively zilch use for the people displaced by destroyed homes and infrastructure.

Bolivians fought back and won, chucked out the World Bank and got their water back.

In India, besides the suicides of hundreds of small farmers caught in the seed machinations created by Monsanto tactics as they’ve also established in Iraq (farmers there can’t save their own seed for replanting), the outside corporations water grab continues, such as Coke destroying villages and farming:

“Many thousands of villages have been unable to get water even from tankers and have been abandoned completely. The entire society is being violently altered by what amounts to wholesale theft of the nation’s water. And, of course, larger forces are prepared to “help” those most in need. One of the powerful forces driving the growing problem worldwide has been the World Bank which, in late 2009, had the astonishing temerity to say that “under current practices” one-third of the world’s population would have access to only half the water they need by the year 2030. The report then recommended that $50 billion be invested annually by governments and business in water management projects. ”

Bastards.

That’s the grab Gleick is part of under the euphemism of concern for the equitable distribution of water, the management, the Regulators, seeks total control of it, and their end view openly stated for those who can read their newspeak.

=======
A point about mercury in fish – somewhere I read that fish also good source of selenium which neutralises the effects of mercury, only small amount needed, so those creating fear stories and putting people off eating fish probably have some agenda. The ‘package’, fish, comes with its own built in defence.. Like aspirin which can cause problems if taken in larger amounts regularly for pain, isolating it from willow bark also takes out the inbuilt defence against this.

Yes, very deep. In Britain they’ve created a particular structure to pretend Common Law doesn’t exist, too complicated to explain here, but basically the UK is a Corporation and all the judiciary act for it and for its legislation which is created by parliament, calling this ‘legal’ which gives the impression it is the same thing as ‘lawful’ in Common Law. It’s a fraud because they don’t explain they’re using the same words but with a meaning peculiar to them in their system, they have devised their own way of getting a ‘contract’ in place passing against the people by the police acting in both roles, upholding Common Law and as the private police force for the Corporation. Not making this clear, which makes it a con, when they announce themselves as police “officers” they are stooges of the Corporation, and when they ask “do you understand” they claim that is acceptance of them in that role, therefore contract is established, i.e. you have agreed to be under their jurisdiction. The antidote if told that you have to do something because their is an act of parliament which makes it legal, is to ask for the law which says you have to. If they try to pass of ‘an act’ as being lawful in Common Law, they can be done for fraud. Reminding of them of this and asking again for the law which says you have to do this, might get them to pause at least to check… I think most now trained as this private police force, they’re not told the difference, and, as in all these kinds of machinations their original defence role in Common Law is sometimes allowed to confuse them, and us, even more.

Judges know the difference. They take an oath under Common Law, but act under Company Law, and they don’t tell you but entrap you in their legalese, which might salve their conscience, but is nonetheless fraud.

Hundreds of protesters from the anti-establishment British Constitution Group stormed a Merseyside court yesterday and ‘arrested’ a judge.
About 600 members of the anti-establishment British Constitution Group gathered at the building as one of their prominent voices, Roger Hayes, faced a bankruptcy hearing for non-payment of council tax.

In chaotic scenes, police rescued judge Michael Peake and escorted him safely from the county court in Birkenhead, Merseyside.

Several arrests were made and police dog-handlers called to the scene.

As Mr Hayes emerged from the court surrounded by his supporters, he said: ‘The judges are breaking the law in their own courts. I asked him (Mr Peake) if he was serving under his oath of office.’

He added: ‘I asked three times for him to confirm this and he refused, so I civilly arrested the judge and I called upon some people in the court to assist me in this.’

People such as Judge Milan Smith are as rare, and are worth their weight in gold.

Here is a man who sits in a highly influential position in his society and is prepared to think in a clear and farsighted manner as to what is the real purpose of the job he has. The vast majority of those in the legal profession, having been fully indoctrinated with the conventions of law, and with little thought to the real purpose of their decision making, simply rely on the rubber stamping decision making processes of ‘precedent’.

This all stems from the days of the Emperor Justinian I setting Tribonian the task of writing a uniform code of law, primarily based on the decisions of the three greatest ‘judges’ of the time. With his team, Tribonian duly did so, combining all those various judgements into one code, based on the precedents set by wise decision making by the wise judges. Most modern law is based on this, but the very funny thing is that recent research shows that where there was no agreement, Tribonion simply falsified and invented it! The major basis of our laws could be brought into question.

Surely, in this day and age, with all our ability to search and research, judges could be called to make sensible informed decisions without resorting to simple precedent, and hopefully without regard to politics.

Mercury in nature is HgS, which is insoluble. You need to heat it up to high temperatures to release the Mercury. If the court was truly worried about Mercury, they would ban CFLs — those CFL lighbulbs contain mercury vapor which is highly toxic. Given the billions of people who will be dealing with these bulbs, the chance of one breaking in many houses is a virtual certainty. Why isn’t the ninth circuit blocking these bulbs?

It’s remarkable that the greens actually is pushing those twisty bulbs into the the lifes of ordinary people without any discussions about the mercury that’s in them.

Right now, it’s a race for LEDs to become cheap enough to make the CFL’s obsolete, but we are already facing a decade’s worth of risk when literally billions of these mercury devices are being placed into the homes of unsuspecting people.

The link I gave about EPA calculating the actual benefits of mercury reductions in the June 6 post at 6:16 AM was from the draft Regulatory Impacts Analysis (RIA) for the mercury reduction rule of EPA (MACT).

In the final RIA, the information was put elsewhere, so the page numbers are not longer correct, although the information is (with the exception of the total cost of the rule, which is now listed as $9.6 billion, not $10 to $11 billion). Here is the link for the final RIA:

“The monetized benefits from reductions in mercury emissions, calculated only for children exposed to recreationally caught freshwater fish, are expected to be $0.004 to $0.006 billion in 2016 using a 3% discount rate and $0.0005 to $0.001 billion using a 7% discount rate.”

These benefits are as low as half a million dollars and as high as 6 million dollars, for a rule which costs about $9.6 billion dollars (with a B).

On pg. 4-3, EPA explains the benefits derived, e.g., increases in aggregate IQ across the nation due to the ~ 90% reduction in utility emitted mercury:

“The first analysis (Section 4.2.1) estimates benefits from avoided IQ loss under various regulatory scenarios for all recreational freshwater anglers in the 48 contiguous U.S. states. The average effect on individual avoided IQ loss in 2016 is 0.00209 IQ points, with total nationwide benefits estimated between $0.5 and $6.1 million.”

As in my earlier post, the total IQ loss across the US should be 512 IQ points nationwide, based upon 240,000 affected children being born each year. But unlike the earlier draft RIA, they don’t give the aggregate 512 IQ loss figure anymore. You have to calculate it by multiplying the 240,000 affected children by the 2.09/1,000 IQ point loss per children (which comes to 501, but I assume rounding error will get 11 more IQ points nationally).